Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation

PM’s Keynote address at Pan IIT Global Summit

  • Friends, I am delighted to join you all today. I have had the opportunity to address convocations at IITs in Chennai, Mumbai, Guwahati and most recently, at Delhi.
  • I am always impressed after interacting with students from IITs. I also come back refreshed and reassured about the future of India and our planet.
  • Friends, You are sons and daughters of India, who are serving humanity. Your spirit for innovation is helping the world dream big.
  • It is also among your greatest strengths. Perhaps it comes second only to your technical and management skills.
  • Someone should calculate the cumulative contribution of IIT alumni to economic value across the planet. I am sure it would compare with the GDP of a nation that has a reasonable size.
  • Friends, There was a time, when a gathering like this would have included alumni from just five or six IITs. That number is growing now, and is close to two dozen.
  • The number of students and alumni have also grown. At the same time, we have ensured that the brand of IITs has only become stronger.
  • We in India are strongly committed to promote science and technology education in India. You would have noticed that in recent times, a culture of hackathons is developing in India.
  • I have also had the opportunity to be a part of some of these hackathons. In these hackathons, I see young minds giving out-standing solutions to national and global problems.
  • We have been working with many countries in South East Asia and Europe in this area. Our aim is to ensure that our youngsters get an international plat-form to showcase their skills.
  • And, learn from best practices globally. Starting 2nd October, on Gandhi Jayanti, India hosted the Vaibhav Summit.
  • Lasting for nearly a month, this Summit brought together top-quality talent in the fields of science and innovation.
  • The number of participants was about Twenty-three thousand. There were 230 panel discussions. Almost 730 hours of discussions.
  • This Summit was productive and it sets the tone for future collaborations in science and innovation.
  • Friends, India is witnessing a sea change in the way it works. Things we thought could never happen are being delivered at great speed.
  • Let me give a small example from a field you know well. Earlier, when IITs produced aero-space engineers, there was not a strong domestic industrial eco-system to employ them.
  • Today, with our historic reforms in the Space sector, the last frontier before humanity has opened up to Indian talent.

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